Croatia can be a better country, We Can! coordinator Sandra Bencic said on Saturday at a protest rally of left-liberal parties, calling on citizens not to go to Germany or Ireland but to the polls.

“You are not the ones who should leave, only Andrej Plenkovic and the HDZ should leave,” she said.

“Regardless of how much they robbed us, they haven’t stolen the hope that we can be a better country,” Benčić told the protesters in Zagreb’s St. Mark’s Square, where the government and parliament are located.

Croatia can be a better country in which the mother of a child with disabilities has guaranteed care for the child, in which a family with two children does not have to borrow until death to buy a flat, in which children have a healthy and merry childhood “in a system which sees and builds, instead of crushing them,” she said.

We can be a country where those who create and produce can earn well, along with those who contribute to society, instead of various brokers, debt collectors or close relatives, a country which people are not leaving to survive but one where people come to live well, Benčić added.

“Don’t go to Germany, don’t go to Ireland, go to the polls so that only those who have to will leave,” she said, referring to the prime minister and the ruling party.

Protesters, party members and sympathisers who filled St. Mark’s Square and the surrounding streets in the centre of the capital said they have had it with corruption, lies, manipulation, and hiring based on party membership.

It’s time for a different Croatia, one without corruption and clientelism, we want a Croatia in which rules are equal for all, we want independent and just institutions before which everyone is equal, we want a country of happy people, it’s time for resistance, we demand elections now, it was said.

Protesters carried placards saying “HDZ state enemy no. 1,” “Either the HDZ or Croatia”, We don’t want reduced institutions”, Lex AP ex AP” and against state attorney general Ivan Turudic and those who voted for his appointment.

The protest was organised by 11 parliamentary parties: the Social Democratic Party, Social Democrats, We Can!, Focus, the Istrian Democratic Party, Reformists, Centre, GLAS, SIP, and Workers’ Front. They were joined by the non-parliamentary Croatian Labour Party and the regional PGS.

The protest was prompted by the recent appointment of judge Ivan Turudic as the new state attorney general. The organisers say he is “an HDZ man” who socialises with criminals and lies.

The protest has been supported by authors, musicians, directors and other artists.